There is a historic strain of dominion theology which says, taking its references from the Psalms, that man is made just a little lower than God, and that we are the crown of creation.
Why is the country not having this conversation, the kind of conversation that requires the politicians who are responsible for the war to be specific to the concerns of the American people.
This “degenerate and unlovely age,” as one historian calls it, exists in the mind of Karl Rove the reputed brain of George W. Bush as the seminal age of inspiration for politics and governance of America today.
Fox News and Rush Limbaugh have raised ignorance to ideology and stupefied an entire political party. No more roguish and rowdy band of predators ever did more to demean and despoil the democracy on whose carcass they feed.
Democracy doesn’t begin at the top; it begins at the bottom, when flesh-and-blood human beings fight to rekindle what Arlo Guthrie calls ‘The Patriot’s Dream.
Barack Obama seemed to think he could win over his enemies. He certainly seemed to believe too much in his own powers of persuasion. One thing’s for sure – he misunderstood the nature of his adversaries.
I hear an almost inaudible but pervasive discontent with the price we pay for our current materialism. And I hear a fluttering of hope that there might be more to life than bread and circuses.
